Poetically Correct

A debut collection of poetry explores love from all angles.Poems about unrequited desire, real and imagined lust, steadfast love, and breakups dominate this book of poems. The collection offers solid cultural groundwork, describing an urban environment where everyone hangs out at the "Stardust Skating Ring," bullets fly like the "Wild Wild West," Lil Wayne plays, and glasses contain Crown Royal. The author provides insight into his personality in the poem "Sincerely Yours": "I am the quiet corner / In a room full of noise. / I am the unknown man walking / Down a street full of boys." He soon segues into love-themed poetry and stays there for the remainder of the volume. Stanzas ooze gratitude to his wife or proffer a laundry list of the little things that demonstrate love. In "Broken Traffic Light," he compares mixed signals received from a lover with the dangers of driving. Several poems are X-rated erotica, like "Washing away Sin," which details a crude shower sex fantasy, and "Reintroducing Foreplay," which proposes how to do just that. A bleaker side of the poet emerges in "Vengeance," dedicated to "my passionately deadly boo," in which the author hopes "you die of AIDS." In his ambitious collection, Sincerely Yours sometimes employs impressive metaphors, such as "my body became a tree, and my feet became roots." But he leans on clichés in lines like "She was like a rose" and "You are my world / My sun, moon, and stars." Profanity sometimes mars these pages; most of the familiar curse words are here, from "fuck" to "pussy." The pornographic language fails to titillate in lines like "Sending you continuous injection / Of my hard erection." And the woe-is-me attitude toward love ("I know you've been abused, / But I am the man / That's the one being used") grows a bit tiresome after 100-plus pages.An uneven volume of poems.

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A self-help book offers teachings from an addiction recovery facility. Beit T'Shuvah is a residential treatment center in California that is also a synagogue. Although addicts need not be Jewish to live there, events like Friday night Sabbath services are regular occurrences. Borovitz (Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, 2016, etc.) and Bergman (Nolo's Deposition Handbook, 2018, etc.) assert that the goal of the facility is to lead everyone who enters, regardless of religious beliefs, to "a richer and more meaningful life," albeit attaining that objective is not always an easy task. At the helm of the operation is Borovitz, a man who has had his own struggles with addiction and who has spent time in prison. The main crux of the book consists of his "ten spiritual commitments," which are based on the Ten Commandments but also borrow from the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous. These are concepts such as the fourth commitment, which encourages individuals to regularly assess their actions with "spiritual inventories." Generally, readers are encouraged to take careful stock of their lives and seek improvement, even if it means becoming only one "grain of sand" better each day. The volume also features testaments from former residents of Beit T'Shuvah and others who have been involved with the organization. At under 200 pages, the book moves quickly, and it certainly delivers a unique perspective on spiritual self-help. Life lessons stemming from an addiction facility steeped in Judaism constitute an intriguing niche, and the counsel given is both practical and humble. But the manual would have benefited from a deeper embrace of its unusual angle. The statements from former residents are concise and often blunt (one ex-patient refers to his past self as "an addicted loser"), but they leave many questions. For instance, what was it like for a non-Jewish, recovering addict to attend Friday services for the first time? How did one's experience at Beit T'Shuvah compare to other facilities? Nevertheless, the work deftly illustrates that people's spiritual journeys, whether they suffer from addictions or not, are not easy. And who better to give advice than those who have traveled on some particularly rocky roads?While it delivers an inviting spiritual approach, this guide could use additional personal details.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)